VIDEO: 12 Most Common Mistakes Foreigners Make When Speaking Thai

Thai people always love to hear foreigners make an effort to speak Thai. We always encourage our students not to be afraid of making mistakes when they have a conversation with local people, we would love students to use the lessons they learn in real life. We believe mistakes are stepping stones to learning! However we as Thai language teachers would like to help you to speak Thai correctly. 🙂

This lesson we put together 12 Most Common Mistakes Foreigners Make When Speaking Thai. We hope you find it useful in your Thai learning.

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Your videos are wonderful, and this lesson was spot on – one of my earliest mistakes was not clearly saying sip baed, taxi drivers always thought I said sip et. So…I had to laugh when I saw that you said this was a common mistake, because I indeed used to make it. Now I over pronounce sip baaaeeeeedddd…555…but that’s Ok, everyone knows I am saying 18 🙂

Thank you for your comment. We are happy to hear that you enjoyed our lesson. 🙂

ทน /ton/ means ‘to stand, tolerate’. มดจะไม่ทน /Mod jà mâi ton/ means I am not going to stand this. This sentence was a phrase from a well known Thai funny ad, so I was just trying not to laugh when using the expression.

Sawasdee krup kru Mod and Kru Pear. First I want to thank you for your excellent lessons, I know many thai words, but they are mostly all nouns and adjectives so I have a lot of problems forming complete sentences. You are helping me to solve that problem! I was wondering what the difference is between gin and deum when talking about drinking. I always thought deum meant drink and gin meant eat, but when you talk about drinking beer you use gin bia. Are these words interchangeable?

Kru Mod…this is an awesome lesson and many of these situations were presented to me on my trip this summer. i stayed for 6 weeks so you can imagine how many times I had chances to make mistakes.

Can you explain how the word กรุณา works into situation number 2? Whats the difference between using ช่วย and กรุณา

Thanks….love these lessons. I stay longer every time I go and I feel like my language has stopped progressing so I’m trying to perfect what I already know. And of course learn to read and write more. Thanks jaaaa

First of all apologies for the delay in my response. Thank you for your comment. I am glad to hear that you enjoyed this lesson.

To answer your question;
– กรุณา is too formal and is not used in spoken Thai.
– It is used to tell people to do or not do something, but it is not necessary about doing something for someone. Whilst ช่วย is commonly used to make a request to give help directly to someone.
– It is usually used in writing such as on signs you might see at temples or hospitals.
For instance; กรุณาถอดรองเท้า (please take off your shoes) กรุณาอย่าส่งเสียงดัง (please don’t make loud noise).

As usual, a very helpfu videol – thank you. I’m wondering between the difference of อย่า and ห้าม I think ห้าม is more used in formal context like ห้ามสูบบุหรี่ whereas อย่า is more used talking with friends, is this right? Or is there some other difference in usage? ขอบคุณมากครับ

First thank you for your video 🙂 I have a question about section No 4 (อยาก). Well, when talking about the persons we have to use อยากมี and talking about things we have to use อยากได้, however what we have to use about the feelings ? I would say ผมอยากมีความสุข because i think happiness doesn’t come into a box 555

I found this latest video (12 Most Common Mistakes) especially helpful. I knew some of the different phrases but did not know why they were used in certain situations and this really helped to make the differences clear. Thank you from New York!